


About Jack

by kw20742



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Lesbian Relationship, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-18 20:56:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20319379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kw20742/pseuds/kw20742
Summary: Missing scene: During 1.5, after Karen White’s articles on Jack Marshall appear in the Herald, M needs J’s help.





	About Jack

**Author's Note:**

> As in my other M/J adventures, I assume as canon the events depicted in Erin Kelly’s official Broadchurch short stories, “The Letter” and “Old Friends” (Minotaur Books 2015). I also assume as part of my headcanon most elements of the lovely “Moments in Time” by spilled_notes. I play a bit here, too, with the two tiny hints that Chris Chibnall gives us in S1 that there is no love lost between M and Jack Marshall.

_The beginning of August 2013._

Maggie all but runs up the footpath to Jocelyn’s. She’s on a mission. This hurricane of a media shit storm around Jack Marshall has to end, and if Jack won’t set the story right himself, and if Maggie can’t track down his ex-wife (she’s working on it), then Jocelyn’s the only other person who can do it.

_If_ Maggie can convince her, that is.

The back gate, she knows, will be unlocked, the key to the slider still in the terracotta pot on the balcony where Jocelyn’s mum always kept it, but Maggie opts to approach from the front. She’s here on official business, after all.

Plus, she hasn’t seen or heard from Jocelyn since just after Easter, when she ran into her quite by accident in the car park after visiting Veronica in the care home. It was pissing down with rain. Jocelyn was hurrying in, and Maggie was on her way back to work. They exchanged quick pleasantries, wished each other well, and went their separate ways.

It wasn’t long after that that Maggie met Lil, the smart—and delightfully smart-_arsed_—American literature lecturer over at Exeter, who’d recruited her as part of a group of Wessex-based professional writers to do a series of guest lectures and writing workshops for undergrads, and then… Danny.

Pausing to catch her breath, she glances up to see if there are any signs of life. But no; as usual, all the windows are shut, and the drapes are closed. In August! How in the hell Jocelyn doesn’t suffocate to death, or spontaneously combust, Maggie isn’t ever sure.

If she didn’t know better, she’d think the house was entirely empty. Or that there was some sort of nefarious operation going on in there. She can’t help but snort aloud at the thought of Jocelyn Knight operating a secret meth lab in her kitchen.

But then she returns to the task at hand: She needs The Barrister to receive her request favourably today, so it’s best not to preemptively pique her ire by pulling faces at her through the back slider.

That’s precisely what Maggie would like to do, of course; it’d be so much more fun! But she won’t. Because Jocelyn has made a fine art of sulking these last couple of years since moving back to Broadchurch, almost as if she enjoys it somehow. And no matter how or what Maggie tries, there seems to be no rousing her out of her funk. Jocelyn misses London terribly, Maggie knows, and her work even more than that.

Veering off the footpath, she turns onto Clifftop Way, the better to approach from the front.

She did suggest back when the macular degeneration was first diagnosed that Jocelyn need not stop taking cases if she didn’t want to, need not even move back to Broadchurch. She could easily hire a good team to do the bulk of her reading for her, two or three smart, keen folks with attention to detail and a willingness to work hard and fast. _Not unlike a newsroom intern,_ Maggie had said. Pay them well, treat them with respect, promise them a good reference and some professional contacts, and they’d probably stick around for a couple of years at least. _Might make some honours grad a fantastic first job post-uni,_ Maggie had posited, _or maybe even a retired solicitor?_

But Jocelyn made very clear that she was not interested, preferring instead to skulk home to the house on the clifftop and glower from the darkness, the perfect embodiment of every cranky old lady stereotype ever.

_All that’s missing are a few dozen cats_, Maggie chuckles to herself, scaling the three stone steps up to the front door.

She rings the bell, turning while she waits to admire from this side of the house the rolling green downs beyond the wide expanse of the town she now loves as fiercely and loyally as if she had been born and bred here. It really is a gorgeous view. Too bad Jocelyn keeps the drapes closed all the time.

And speaking of drapes, there’s Jocelyn to her right, in the formal sitting room’s window, pulling them aside so she can peek out before having to commit to coming all the way into the vestibule to open the outer door.

Smirking, Maggie wonders if she intends to be seen, or if she thinks she’s being furtive. Assuming it’s the former, she starts to wave a friendly ‘hello,’ but the heavy brown fabric closes again before she can even get her hand all the way up.

Getting Jocelyn to agree to go on the record about Jack Marshall might be even more difficult than she anticipated, but she can’t help but grin anyway. She can picture Jocelyn on the other side of the window, eyes narrowed, arms crossed, hips forward, lips pursed tightly together, contemplating, Maggie suspects, what the veteran reporter’s visit could portend and whether she should be bothered to let her in.

Indeed, Maggie is correct. But what she can’t possibly know is that, on the other side of those drapes, Jocelyn is also trying to catch her breath, arrested by the unexpected sight of Maggie bloody Radcliffe on her doorstep: those strong shoulders, that good-humored grin, shoulder-length blonde hair always twisting in the wind, framing keen grey-green eyes glinting in the afternoon sun. There’s a sudden pain as the razor-sharp pieces of Jocelyn’s shattered heart lodge themselves into the back of her throat, and hot tears sting unexpectedly behind her eyelids.

Closing her eyes with an audible exhale, she wonders not for the first time what it will actually take to get Maggie to just leave her alone. Goodness knows she’s told her to go away enough times, ignored her when she’s seen her at the library or the post office, been intentionally rude if Maggie spots her first. And she deliberately avoids the high street, acknowledging that as the journalist’s turf. Because it just hurts too much. To see her, to be near her. And it takes too much energy to pretend otherwise.

Maggie rings the bell again. Easily a minute passes. Which doesn’t seem as if it’s a long time, but you try waiting on somebody’s doorstep for a full sixty seconds, petal, and see if it doesn’t feel like an eternity.

_Pull yourself together_, Jocelyn demands silently of herself, forcing her eyes to trace a line in the geometric pattern of the throw pillow she seems to have grabbed at some point in the last few minutes.

Just as Maggie does start to think that she might have to go around back and let herself in after all, though, Jocelyn finally unbolts the inner wooden door and steps down into the vestibule.

Maggie’s won! This round at least.

No time for gloating; round two begins immediately.

“What the bloody hell do _you_ want?” Jocelyn snarls by way of a greeting. She throws open the door and then retreats back into the darkness of her inner sanctum.

“Nice to see you, too,” Maggie retorts, closing shut the door behind her while noting not for the first time what a cozy little room this would be for curling up with a good book and a brew on a blustery winter’s day. She follows Jocelyn through the front hall and into the kitchen.

“I’ve put the kettle on,” Jocelyn announces.

Maggie decides to take this declaration as an invitation and hitches herself up onto one of the high stools at the table by the window. She removes her trusty notebook and a pen from her bag, which she then hangs by its strap over the back of the chair. Having received loud and clear the message that there will be no pleasantries today, she gets right to the point.

“I’ve come to ask you about Jack Marshall.”

“Officially?” Jocelyn asks, spying the notebook as she reaches up into the cupboard over the sink for the cannister of teabags.

“Yes,” Maggie responds while trying to ignore how long and lean Jocelyn still is, how her back arches just so as she stretches upward, how her jumper hugs her hips, how good her rear end still looks in a pair of jeans…

“I have nothing to say.”

“The shit’s hit the fan down there,” Maggie responds, dragging her eyes back up to safety just as Jocelyn turns around, “I’m trying to help him.”

“You call all that ‘help,’ do you?”

Enraged, Jocelyn gestures emphatically towards the onslaught of national front-page news coverage that, now Maggie sees, is currently strewn all over the low table in the conservatory.

From her vantage point, Maggie can easily tell that Jocelyn’s got copies of (at least) _The Herald_, _The Times_, and _The Courier_. National papers all. But she notes that _The Guardian_ isn’t among them; she’s been rather proud in the middle of all this that her former stomping ground (and still favourite national daily) has stayed out of the fray, resisting the urge to give in to salacious attacks and sensationalized horse shit.

“There’s been nothing in the _Echo_, you will have noticed. And there won’t be. Until I get the facts. Which is why I need your help.”

“Just because you didn’t write any of it yourself doesn’t mean you’re not implicated.”

“Oh, please,” Maggie splutters, unwilling to allow the usually (and often infuriatingly) logical Jocelyn this level of absurdity, “you can’t possibly hold me responsible for publications over which I have no control.”

“Of _course_ I can,” Jocelyn snaps. “They’re your colleagues. Some of them are even your _friends_,” she roars, gaining her stride now, “And _you’re_ here. They’re not.”

“That’s ridicu—”

“You’re all the same, you people,” she sneers contemptuously, “You’ve all—

“What the hell is that supp—”

“You know exactly what it means! The lot of you! You’re insatiable. Greedy! Just aiming to sell more and more—”

“Jocelyn—” Maggie warns, trying to get a word in.

“—of your wretched rags. You don’t care how you do it. Or whose lives you have to ruin in the process.”

“That’s not entirely tr—”

“You’ve all raked Jack through the mud, playing fast and loose with little bits—”

“_I_ haven’t.”

“—of information, snippets of context, that you never bothered to get right in the first place.”

“Not me. Not _my_ paper,” Maggie responds tersely. Her tone is a warning: to insult the _Echo_, to insinuate that her editorial standards are anything less than impeccable, is to insult her. Professionally _and_ personally.

As indignant as she is, though, she cannot help but note that Jocelyn has referred to Broadchurch’s news agent by his first name, which reveals an informal familiarity that she’s heretofore refused to acknowledge. She’s also inadvertently revealed that she knows what’s being reported by the media isn’t what actually happened all those years ago. These things, in addition to the unprecedented level of irrational rage, likely mean Jocelyn Knight knew Jack Marshall quite well, perhaps even better than Maggie’s been able to discern from her research. Now they’re getting somewhere.

Jocelyn heeds the not-so-subtle warning and dials down the bollocking a notch. “This is a man’s _life_, Maggie.”

“I _know_ that, Jocelyn.”

As the tea kettle shrills on the hob behind her, Jocelyn throws one last scowl over at Maggie before retreating to her corner to prepare the mugs.

Round two has ended, although without a clear winner.

Maggie, slumping into her own corner, could strangle Oliver, working so closely with that Karen White, a walking incarnation of bombastic swagger. And with clearly no respect for her elders.

Truth be told, though, Karen reminds Maggie a lot of herself at that age: over-confident, impertinent, and impatient for the thrill of the chase. But Maggie had the Yorkshire Ripper, the national miner’s strike, and Greenham to cut her teeth on. What’s poor Karen got? Corporate encroachment, clickbait, and an increasingly disengaged public. How things have changed. Maggie’s not quite old enough to miss scissors and glue, petal, but a good, thick fax still gives her a thrill. And she’s not ashamed to admit it.

She sighs heavily. It’s all gotten a bit away from her this last week or so. She got knocked off her game by that rape threat, is all. But she knows, deep in her reporter bones, that Jack Marshall isn’t the story here.

Keeping all this to herself, she says, quite simply, as Jocelyn places a steaming mug on the table in front of her, signalling a truce of sorts, “That’s why I’ve trudged all the way up here. To _help_ him. To set the story straight.”

“And what makes you think _I_ know anything about it,” Jocelyn queries, standing at the sink to sip gingerly from her own mug while glancing warily at Maggie from over the rim, “anything about _him_?”

By way of reply to such a patently ludicrous question, Maggie simply raises an eyebrow at Jocelyn, who posed the question only to stall in any case; she knows very well that former crime reporter Maggie, tireless and impeccable researcher that she is, knows how and where to get the background information she needs to report a story properly.

Ever since she suggested that Jack come to Broadchurch, that he take over the little newsstand at the top of the pier, Jocelyn’s been anticipating, even expecting, the day when Maggie’s superb mind would connect the dots between them. Not that it mattered all that much in the grand scheme. Despite everything, she knows the _Broadchurch Echo_’s editor well enough to know that, no matter how slow the news, she’d never bother to report on such a non-story.

In the last few days, though, Jack’s conviction for underage sex more than twenty years ago matters so much more than it ever did back then. In the wake of Danny Latimer’s murder, it’s taken on meanings it never had. It’s become tawdry, dirty, decidedly criminal. Laced with all sorts of homophobic assumptions. When it never was any of that.

Did Jack technically commit a crime? Yes. He pled guilty, served his time. And if those media hacks had ever actually seen Jack and Rowena together, or known their son... There’s so much more to the story, to Jack’s life, than is being reported in the press.

But Jocelyn’s silence is all about safeguarding her friend’s privacy; it always has been. What happened has always been his story to tell, should ever he choose to do so. Plus, the rules of legal privilege between a client and their barrister are never negated, even after a case is over. Jocelyn could face disbarment for talking to Maggie about Jack—even if doing so is meant to help him.

Jocelyn’s thinking, too, as she takes another sip of tea to avoid Maggie’s relentless gaze, of ways to get this troublesome journalist out of her house—and out of her _life_. For good.

It just hurts too much to have her here, to be reminded of the last time they were in this very room together, that cozy Christmas Day almost fifteen years ago now, chatting and laughing, teasing and arguing (_or was it flirting?_ Jocelyn’s wondered since then) as they tidied up after dinner, their fingers brushing lightly, repeatedly, lingering a little longer each time, as Jocelyn hand washed and then passed to Maggie to dry the Knight family porcelain, used only for holidays and special occasions.

She remembers being so happy that week, of having laughed heartily and slept well. An entire week of deep, sound, contented sleeps, followed by quiet days spent chatting with her mum, reading under the cozy blanket Maggie had given her for Christmas, walking along the cliffs, and biding her time until Maggie got off work.

They spent Boxing Day with Veronica here at the house, alternatively trouncing each other at Scrabble and debating whether or not the UK should’ve adopted the Euro. Maggie was back at work on Monday, but they met for a quick tea at the café by the pier on Tuesday, where they shared a tuna sandwich and clashed over the House of Lords Act. (On this topic, Maggie remained, predictably and proudly, the annoyingly intransigent progeny of her working-class feminist roots.) Maggie had to work quite late on Wednesday, getting the weekly edition out, but Jocelyn invited her to meet on Thursday afternoon for a walk along the cliffs. As cold and blustery as it was, she was greedy for any time spent with her friend before having to get on the train that would take her back to work, back to real life.

It was during that walk that Jocelyn’s plan for a simple New Year’s Eve celebration began to take shape and she found herself wishing, as her regular December holiday in Broadchurch drew to a close, that she could stay a bit longer, or that Maggie lived closer to London.

She didn’t realize or even understand it at the time, of course, but she fell in love with Maggie Radcliffe that week. Because of her passion and conviction. Because she offered an intellectual challenge. Because she wasn’t the least bit intimidated by The Barrister. And, of course, because of that dazzling smile.

If only she’d known her own heart. If only she hadn’t been afraid of what people—colleagues, clients—would say, of what being with Maggie could do to her career. If only she’d apologized, taken back that stupid lie. Something about too much champagne?

So many “if onlys.”

But she’d left it all behind, every single, glorious minute of it, when she ran away.

She shakes her head firmly. “Maggie, what you ask is impossible. I will not, I cannot, talk to you about this. Under any circumstances.”

“Will you at least confirm, for the record, that you represented him?”

Jocelyn only stares, lips pursed.

Intentionally parroting Jocelyn’s earlier words, Maggie replies rather snarkily, “This is a man’s _life_, Jocelyn!”

“Then ask _him_ about it, Maggie!”

“I did! Well, I _tried_,” she clarifies. “He called me a ‘beaver eating bitch’ and rang off on me.”

Jocelyn’s eyes go wide, and she can feel her cheeks flush, part mortification and part disbelief. “He _said_ that?!”

“Yup.”

“I’m… I can’t— That’s horrible.”

“Yes,” Maggie agrees, “but you gotta admire the alliteration.”

Jocelyn splutters slightly in response; Maggie always did have impeccable comic timing and an admirable ability to find humour—however sardonic—in even the most terrible situations. Still…

“I didn’t realize he…” Jocelyn shrugs her shoulders; she doesn’t even know how to finish the sentence.

But Maggie most certainly does: “That he’s a sexist, homophobic prick?”

She’s been out and proud since university, petal, and a feminist activist to boot, so she’s more than accustomed to dealing with the likes of Jack Marshall. “Yeah. Well. We’ve had words before. Not these, specifically. These were new.”

“Can you blame him, though?” Jocelyn wonders aloud; she’s still absorbing this knowledge that the quiet, gentle man she knows—she and Sharon were witnesses at his wedding, for goodness sake, and she was Simon’s godmother—could launch such vitriol towards the woman she loves. “He must be having a terrible time just now.”

“Yes. Actually. I _can_ blame him. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to help the bloody tosser.”

The wind has gone a bit out of Jocelyn’s sails as she tries to reconcile this new, hateful Jack with the Jack she knows. She shakes her head slightly, realizing that his vile hatred may well have been directed at her, too. Had he known. Who she is, who she loves.

Speaking of which, she silently upbraids herself: she should’ve known that Maggie had done her due diligence, that she wouldn’t have come up here if she hadn’t already tried to talk to Jack. And as wide pale blue eyes lock onto flinty grey, Jocelyn is reminded anew of the awesome respect she has for the intrepid editor of the _Broadchurch Echo_. This is so much a part of why she fell in love with her all those years ago: her integrity, her unwavering commitment to equity and justice. Jack had treated her dreadfully, and clearly not for the first time, yet here she is, still trying to help him.

“Look, Jocelyn,” Maggie begins again, getting them back on track, “I’m trying to find his ex-wife. Rowena, I think her name is?”

Maggie hasn’t really forgotten she’s just hoping Jocelyn will fall for a tried and true reporters’ trick. She glances up quickly: no such luck. This eminent QC, with more than a dozen high profile criminal trials under her belt, is far too media savvy for that, but Maggie had to try anyway.

“It’s been a couple of days, though, and I haven’t heard, anything.” Maggie opens her notebook and readies her pen. “So, will you just—”

“No.”

“I _could_ run the story without you, you know. Or him.”

“But you won’t.”

“Won’t I?”

“No. That would be profoundly unethical. Not to mention shoddy journalism. Well beneath you.” Jocelyn whisks Maggie’s half empty mug away to the sink; it’s time she was going.

Although Maggie will never admit it to her, Jocelyn is right. It doesn’t matter how far revenues fall, or what her colleagues at the bigger, more prestigious papers think. She didn’t take this job at the edge of bloody nowhere to compromise her journalistic integrity. Just the opposite, in fact. She wanted to be in charge of her own newsroom, and such an opportunity was (and still is) scant to nil for a woman in London or Manchester or any of the other big cities. Or even the smaller ones. But the _Broadchurch Echo_ needed an editor-in-chief, so she got out her map and train schedule, requested the transfer, aced the interview, and here she is.

Almost fifteen years on now, and she loves Broadchurch, its people, its rhythms. She loved it the moment she saw that sunset. But she wouldn’t necessarily have moved here otherwise; she’s always preferred to live in cities. Some geographical compromise was necessary, though, in order to fulfill her professional goal of running her own show.

Now she’s here, in the last place she would ever have expected to be once again at the centre of a major media shit storm, and well, the _Echo_ may be a tiny, provincial operation, petal, but she’ll be damned if she’s going to pander to the lowest common denominator. So, Jocelyn’s right: no sources to corroborate her research means no story, plain and simple.

“For fuck’s _sake_, Jocelyn,” she exclaims out of sheer frustration while flipping closed her notebook, ramming the cap back onto her pen, and shoving both back into her bag.

“Your _language_, Maggie,” Jocelyn parrots, pretending to be shocked as she heads for the door.

“Oh, shut up,” Maggie retorts, swinging her bag up and across her shoulders before following Jocelyn back through the hall and out into the vestibule, where Jocelyn can’t get the door open—or the reporter out through it—fast enough.

“Look,” Maggie begins, ignoring Jocelyn’s clear desire to be rid of her, “I respect your professionalism. Your loyalty. You know I do, but I really am worried for him. Won’t you just—”

“Goodbye, Maggie,” Jocelyn responds with finality, inviting Maggie to leave—now—with a silent sweep of her arm in the direction of the gravel driveway.

Reluctantly resigned to having lost this fight, the combined result of her adversary’s intractability and her own journalistic integrity, Maggie decides to get a little of her own back by sticking her tongue out at The Barrister on her way out, thereby taking the opportunity to pull the face she denied herself earlier.

And although Jocelyn pretends to be annoyed by this, when she is once more behind her closed door and heavy drapes, she grants herself permission to smile. Just a little bit.

  
****  
Roughly thirty-six hours later, Maggie is dressed and in the car on her way up to Jocelyn’s. She’s just rung off with the harbour master, and walking will take too long.

It’s barely half five in the bloody morning, but she rings Olly from the car anyway, barking orders to get down to Harbour Cliff Beach. She needs a reporter on the scene immediately, and Olly knows the drill.

They’re likely to get scooped by the national dailies, anyway, but it’s worth a try. And she can think of no better way for cub reporter Olly to learn once and for all the consequences of running rough shod over people’s lives. He clearly hasn’t yet absorbed this lesson, despite Maggie having threatened to string him up by the bollocks for tweeting out Danny’s name on that first day of this fresh, new hellscape in which they’ve all found themselves.

She doesn’t bother to call Reg; there’s no way she’s going to print photos of Jack Marshall’s lifeless body washed up on the bloody beach. She’ll run an old file pic, maybe with the Sea Brigade Boys. But she’ll have to choose it carefully, to avoid all this exaggerated, homophobic horse shit.

If only he’d consented to talk to her…

“Fuck,” she exclaims aloud, slamming the heel of her hand on the steering wheel. Ironically, she didn’t like Broadchurch’s only news agent, and the antipathy between them was absolutely mutual. But she could’ve helped him. She wanted to. She had tried.

She rounds the corner onto Clifftop Way, her stomach now officially in knots as the house comes into view behind the hedgerow.

Jocelyn, she remembers, used to be a morning person, up early even on weekends. Working. But that was so long ago now, and who knows if it’s still true. And really, Maggie reminds herself for the millionth time, who the fuck knows if anything about those six months, fifteen years ago was how she remembers it?

But there’s a light on in the kitchen she notices, pulling to a stop in the gravel driveway, so Jocelyn must be up and about already. That’s good; she really didn’t want to have to wake her. A groggy Jocelyn roused from sleep and still in her pyjamas is the last fucking thing she needs right now. She shifts the car into park and turns off the engine. Her brain is moving too fast and too slow all at the same time, and she can’t seem to make her limbs work properly.

Meanwhile, from the couch in the conservatory, where she’s just sat down with her newspapers and morning tea, Jocelyn watches Maggie shut the car door, glance apprehensively up at the house, and make her way to the front entrance. Knowing full well that whatever Maggie’s doing here (again) must have to do with Jack—and from her body language that it’s obviously bad news—Jocelyn is tempted to just ignore her arrival. But she knows that won’t work with Maggie Radcliffe.

So, she reluctantly puts down her tea and her newspaper to meet the journalist at the door just as the bell chimes.

“Oh, hi!” Maggie exclaims, startled, “that was quick.”

Jocelyn simply watches and waits. Wordlessly. And Maggie’s not ashamed to admit (although only to herself) that it’s a little unnerving. The silence is thick and heavy between them; so many things have never been said.

“Jack’s dead,” Maggie announces, far more bluntly than she’d planned, “they found him an hour ago, on Harbour Cliff Beach.”

Jocelyn says nothing. At least not out loud. But those icy pools of blue are glinting sapphire in a barely concealed combination of panic and regret, grief and anger.

“Looks like suicide.”

Still, Jocelyn is silent, unmoving. Some might mistakenly say ‘unmoved,’ but Maggie knows better.

So she continues, partly to fill the dreadful silence. “I wanted to…” Partly to offer sympathy for the death of a man who had somehow been more to Jocelyn than a mere client. “I thought…” And partly to deflect the indictment being handed down by the glare that, by now, has turned mostly to rage. “I didn’t want you to learn about it from the papers. Or the telly.”

“Well, I hope you’re all bloody pleased with yourselves,” Jocelyn finally pronounces acerbically.

“Look, Jocelyn—”

“Just leave me alone.”

“But are you—” Maggie begins, stepping slightly forward and using her shoulder to block Jocelyn’s attempt to close the door on her, “Will you be alright?”

“I’m always alright,” Jocelyn replies in a quiet monotone that matches the resigned, distant expression in her eyes.

Maggie is well-acquainted with that look; she last saw it that terrible New Year’s Day when the Jocelyn she had come to know, come to _love,_ disappeared into thin air even as she sat next to her on their bench, in plain sight. Jocelyn had stared right through Maggie in that moment, as if she, Maggie, were a ghost or, worse, had never been part of Jocelyn’s life at all. That look, Maggie learned the hard, heartbreaking way all those years ago, is part of Jocelyn’s well-honed ability to cordon her life off into compartments, to construct barriers that enable her to ignore entirely the things, people, and feelings that she doesn’t want to either face or acknowledge.

Maggie hates this about her. But knowing the strength of those barriers and (even after all these years) still smarting from having come smack up against them, Maggie knows she has no choice but to do as Jocelyn asks. She will leave her alone. So she retreats, enabling Jocelyn to close the glass-paned door, cross the vestibule, and shut herself into that big house on the clifftop.

  
***  
It would be eight long months before these two formidable women saw each other again, the afternoon of Joe Miller’s plea hearing. When Maggie used the spare key from that terracotta pot on the balcony to unlock the French door, swing open the heavy drapes, and let herself into Jocelyn’s house. And back into her life, once and for all.

_The End._


End file.
